Iranian Scientist Assassinated as US Steps Up War Threats


by Bill Van Auken
WSWS.org
January 13, 2010



Massoud Ali Mohammadi, one of Iran’s leading nuclear scientists, was assassinated in Tehran Tuesday, just two days after the top US military commander in the region announced that the Pentagon has drawn up plans to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.

The killing and the ratcheting up of military threats are indicative of the deepening international tensions over the Iranian nuclear program. While the US, Israel and other Western powers have charged Tehran with seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon, Iran has insisted repeatedly that its nuclear programs are for peaceful purposes only.

Ali Mohammadi, 50, was killed when a powerful remote-controlled bomb exploded near his vehicle as he prepared to drive to work at Tehran University. The blast shattered windows 300 feet away in Ali Mohammadi’s northern Tehran neighborhood of Qeytariyeh. It was reported that the bomb was strapped to a motorcycle.

Ali Mohammadi taught neutron nuclear physics at the university, and, according to at least one report from Iran, he was among Iranian citizens subject to international sanctions for involvement in the nuclear program.

Colleagues of the murdered professor described him as apolitical, although his name appeared with those of more than 200 other academics in a statement supporting opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi’s challenge to the results of the disputed June12 presidential election, which gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term.

Iran’s senior prosecutor charged the US and Israel with responsibility for the attack. “Given the fact that Massoud Ali Mohammadi was a nuclear scientist, the CIA and Mossad services and agents most likely have had a hand in it,â€